Some Background for Context

In the 1950s, nearly all software was produced by academics and researchers. They shared computer software and source code without limitations so users could fix their own bugs. Much of this was public domain software — which, in a copyright sense, is the freest form of free.

Part of this was cultural. Part of this was due to the nature of software. Unlike physical goods, digital software could be copied endlessly for free and at minimal effort. Computer hardware could be sold, sure, but code?

This started to change by the 1970s. IBM began charging separately for software and stopped providing source code. This spawned an antitrust lawsuit lasting from 1969 to 1982. In 1983, Apple won a Supreme Court case determining that binary software could be copyrighted. Microsoft released Windows a few years later.

This was the climate under which the movement to keep software “free” formed.

Origins of the Free Software Movement

Starting in the 1970s, Unix was the dominant operating system. In 1983, Richard Stallman announced a project to create a completely non-proprietary Unix-compatible operating system, the GNU Project. Two years later, he founded the Free Software Foundation with the mission of advocating for, and educating people about, free software.

Stallman didn’t coin the phrase “free software,” which largely referred to software in the public domain. But he expanded on what it meant for software to be free.

The Free Software Foundation defines free software as software that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve. The “free” refers to these freedoms, not price. It just happens to be the case that most free software doesn’t cost money, largely because companies seeking to sell software tend to restrict the freedom of users to copy, distribute, or improve what they buy.

Freedom 0 — The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.

Freedom 1 — The freedom to study how the program works and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Freedom 2 — The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.

Freedom 3 — The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Coining the Phrase “Open Source”

While the free software label is an explicitly ethical one, the open source label is not. The term formed in the 1990s, after Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar helped inspire Netscape to release the source code for its Netscape Communicator internet suite.

The open source movement doesn’t ignore free software values, but it’s more concerned with open collaboration. The goal is for companies and developers to make the code for their software freely available. This way users can trust the programs running on their machines and contribute fixes and features back to the project.

Many of the ethics still align, but the open source movement is less confrontational and more willing to compromise in order to spread adoption.

A Key Difference

The free software and open source movements agree on most of the core values, but they have different definitions of freedom.

Free software licenses are also open source, but not all open source licenses require developers to share their code. Some permit developers to use open source code to create closed source applications, such as the MIT License. These non-copyleft licenses are known as permissive licenses.

While a free software advocate may view the utilization of free software to create non-free software as restricting a user’s freedoms, an open source proponent may be more inclined to view a permissive license as truly free — as in people are free to do whatever they want with the code, even if that means making a proprietary app.

Some particularly prominent individuals contend that some free software licenses, such as GPL v3, have so many conditions that they significantly limit a developer’s freedom.

The Need for FOSS

To recap, all free software is open source software, but not all open source software is free software. For this reason, free software advocates would prefer to refer to free software as free software. But because general users associate “free” with price, this name isn’t all that clear. Things are especially convoluted if you actually are having a discussion about free software in the context of money.

That’s why you see most free software referred to as free and open source software, or FOSS. This allows you to say that free software on Windows often comes with ads but free and open source software does not, without confusing everyone in the room.

But the free and open source software world is one that openly discusses ethics, so words matter, even if this can make life more confusing.

Do you agree with free software principals or the open source movement? Do you empathize with both? What do you think we should call free and open source software? Let’s discuss this in the comments below!

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spyjoshx

February 22, 2017 at 2:27 am

Great article! This really clears a lot up for me. So according to these definitions, ardour and Firefox are open source, whereas things like nano and nautilus and pcmanfm (correct me if I'm wrong) are free software.

Not quite. Ardour is licensed under GPLv2. Firefox is licensed under MPL 2.0, which is GPL-compatible. All three of the other programs you mentioned are licensed under the GPL. In short, all five of those apps are both free and open source.

Bertel is digital minimalist and creative who does all of his work using Linux and free software. Having graduated from the College of William and Mary with a background in history and government, he is as comfortable discussing digital rights and policy as he is reviewing apps.